That is exactly the problem. There has been no solution to this thread from VMware/Intel. You can find the same analagous thread at the Intel community forums...
Its still the same thread.. same problem... no solution.
example:
http://communities.intel.com/message/79498#79498
The Intel S3420GP motherboard is in the SR1630GP barebones server, the intel entry/value server that is in distribution. The problem is that Intel/VMware have been touting the 'partnership' on this line of products, specifically announcing the motherboard/servers as being certified.
see the following page:
http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/products/server/436106.htm
e.g.:
Certified in Q4: Intel® Server Board S3420GP, Intel® Server Systems SR1630GP and SR1630HGP
But unfortunately, the 'certified' doen't seem to follow common sense in that all the hardware is supported. It isn't.
Basically, the driver does not recognize the PCI-ID of one of the ethernet chipsets, and even when modified to recognize, the driver doesn't work properly.
Now that's strange, as the RHEL e1000 driver has no problem.
The mainline distribution including Ingram really PUSHED this platform in the reseller arena -
without full hardware support!
Its just not reasonable to call something a 'certified' platform with a caveat of 'not really'... we buy a server with 2 ethernet ports, especially a 1U, to meet bid specs, etc., play the safe route and pick one that is 'certified', and then for some reason expect that if you really want to use two ethernets, you need to add a PCIe card... which of course is not possible in 1 1U platform if you plan on doing something 'normal' like add a HCL-compliant RAID card like one from LSI.
Ingram, Intel, and VMware have been pretty well unresponsive on the issue. I have 6 of these servers, sitting around, since I had to buy different ones that did work.
Hopefully, if you are thinking of getting a sr1630gp or s3420 and need 2 ethernet ports, DONT go with this platform. Hopefully that will change.
